Cheaper Heating Oil Fuels Billions in Savings in Northeast

January 26, 2015

"On top of the broad savings Americans are reaping from cheaper gasoline, plummeting oil prices stand to bring residents in the Northeast billions more dollars in savings this winter when they fill up their home-heating-oil tanks, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.
As the price of crude falls world-wide, the current average price for heating oil in the U.S.has dropped $1.10 from a year ago to under $3 a gallon for the first time in more than four years, the article states. The Journal quotes Chris Lafakis, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics, saying that a dollar per gallon in savings over the whole heating season could mean roughly $3 billion in savings for Northeast residents. This translates into hundreds of dollars in savings with each heating-oil fill-up, the Journal writes.
The steep decrease in prices is also largely good news for regional oil dealers, which are often small, family-owned businesses that have lost business to an expanding web of natural-gas mains for decades, the article states. Lower prices mean paying less to fill trucks and better odds that customers can pay bills on time, Michael Ferrante, president of the Massachusetts Energy Marketers Association, told the Journal.
“While federal data show natural gas remains a cheaper fuel nationwide, in pipeline-constrained Maine, gas on average is actually more expensive now for residential customers, once oil prices are converted into a comparable unit of measurement, according to Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s energy office,” the article states.
- See more at: http://americanenergycoalition.com/2015-news/january-21-2015-cheaper-hea..."